Merging macrodata with microdata

[Olayemi Olabiyi]

I have been trying to merge macro-level data from WDI with microlevel data from Afrobarometer survey using COUNTRY as the unique identifier, but without success. I destringed the COUNTRY in the macro dataset, but it still didn't work. Please help me.

[Andrew Musau]

You shouldn't be using destring at all with country names. Open each dataset and run

dataex in 1/10

Then copy and paste the output here.

[Olayemi Olabiyi]

Thank you, Andrew. I used encode instead of destring.

My result
merge m:1 COUNTRY using "macro.dta"
(variable COUNTRY was byte, now long to accommodate using data's value)
variable COUNTRY does not uniquely identify observations in the using data

[Rich Goldstein]

use of encode separately in each file is almost certainly a mistake (unless you also use the "label" option); please do as both the FAQ and Andrew Musau suggest

[Olayemi Olabiyi]

I used the encode command only for the COUNTRY variable in the macro-level data.

[Olayemi Olabiyi]

macro-level data . dataex in 1/10 ----------------------- copy starting from the next line -----------------------

 * Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex clear input int year1 double GDPpercapita str13 D byte COUNTRY 2016  1010.533896199298 "Benin"    1 2017 1054.9740806681434 "Benin"    1 2018 1151.7409703472013 "Benin"    1 2019 1130.8213533979497 "Benin"    1 2020 1200.1942655778935 "Benin"    1 2021 1318.6515807519838 "Benin"    1 2022 1266.4271103190442 "Benin"    1 2023 1394.1778472183137 "Benin"    1 2016   6749.05994339013 "Botswana" 2 2017  7104.964010880272 "Botswana" 2 end label values COUNTRY country label def country 1 "Benin", modify label def country 2 "Botswana", modify

------------------ copy up to and including the previous line ------------------ Listed 10 out of 256 observations micro-level data . dataex in 1/10 input statement exceeds linesize limit. Try specifying fewer variables

[Olayemi Olabiyi]

Problem solved. Thanks, everyone.